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Dodgers having trouble finding trade partner

December 8, 2009 | 5:23
pm

The Dodgers aren’t making any headway in their efforts to land a pitcher on the trade market, General Manager Ned Colletti said tonight.“Without deadlines, it’s tough to push deals to get made so that was always somewhat of a longshot,” Colletti said.Among the pitchers the Dodgers inquired about is Roy Halladay of the Toronto Blue Jays. The Dodgers’ list of targets also includes three mid-level pitchers.According to a source, the Dodgers were among the teams that talked to the Detroit Tigers about Edwin Jackson, who has reportedly been traded to the Arizona Diamondbacks in a three-way deal involving the New York Yankees. The Dodgers were scared off by the combination of Detroit’s asking price and the arbitration-eligible Jackson’s projected salary in 2010.Colletti said he would exhaust his options on the trade market before turning his attention to free agents.“If you make a trade, you change your dynamics for free agency as well,” he said. “So we’re trying to get deals done before we do much free-agent work and figure the deals we’re trying to get done are impossible to make.”The Dodgers have had preliminary discussions with the representatives of Randy Wolf, Vicente Padilla and Joel Pineiro.Colletti said he has not been instructed to stay away from signing players to multi-year deals. But he declined to say if he thought there were any free agents other than John Lackey who merited such contracts.Colletti said he hopes to add one starting pitcher this off-season, adding that the fifth spot in the rotation could be filled in-house by the likes of James McDonald, Josh Lindblom, Charlie Haeger and Ramon Troncoso.-- Dylan Hernandez in Indianapolis